Paul Heintz | À l'oeuvre 2020
Paul Heintz graduated of the Beaux-Arts de Nancy, the Arts Décoratifs de Paris and the Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains.
His practice, which combines object, sound, video and installation, has been presented at events and festivals such as FID Marseille, IFFR Rotterdam, Paris Nuit Blanche, Circulation(s). It is the winner of the Révélation Emerige 2019 prize.
Transcript
Character is based on an investigation I conducted in England over the course of a year in which I searched for people with the same name as Winston Smith, the main character in George Orwell's novel, 1984.
The idea was to go and meet these people to investigate how literature and Orwell's novel influences their lives, if at all.
It's actually also a film about curiosity about the other, about me going towards them. I suggested that we come together. I organized this meeting of six Winston Smith namesakes, a bit like a sort of reconstituted family, people who didn't know each other yet.
Perhaps Winston Smith namesakes need to create a movement. In any case, they would like to see each other again.
I took on the editing of the film, with Jeanne Sarfati, an editor with whom I work, and also conducted various experiments for the installation version of the film, which will be shown at the GB Agency gallery in May.
During this year-long investigation, I searched through the English phonebooks and met with a private detective. I also tried to experiment with the re-staging of this investigation, to find a slightly allegorical way of playing with these documents.
Each of them is a visual composition as well as unprocessed research material that can be presented and recomposed each time.